Group Visibility to Students & Assigning Multiple Group Sets + More...

I was working with an instructor on setting up groups for his Lab class and ran into some curiosities of function for groups in Canvas. Could someone either answer the below or let me know if it is a feature idea being voted on?

1. Is there a way to prevent students of a different section from viewing certain group names in a group set?

Explanation: The teacher wants the students to self-enroll into their groups by their section only. However, no one has enrolled in a group yet, so Canvas does not automatically know what groups should be assigned to which section/student. Is there a way so ONLY the groups he wants them to enroll in become visible?

NOTE: In this Group Set he combined 2 course sections into ONE Canvas course, and put all their groups in ONE group set as Canvas does not allow more than one group set to be assigned to an assignment. (see #2 below for why this happened)

ADDITIONAL COMMENT: There needs to be an indicator of what section a Group is set to. I just removed students from the course section (default one all students fall into), even though students are in another section, it pulled the students OUT of their groups that were already enrolled.

2. Is there a way to assign more than one group set to an assignment, rather than creating a new assignment?

Explanation: The teacher teaches the same class on Mondays & Wednesdays, so his Canvas course has the sections combined. He divided the sections, and now wants groups divided for an assignment in that course (group assignments). At first we divded the groups into 2 group sets so we could see the Monday vs. Wednesday group sets, but realized you CANNOT assign more than one group set to an assignment. These groups will stay together the rest of the semester, so there is no need to consider it by assignment #.

3. Is a feature idea out to pick "lock out dates" and/or "deploy dates" for self-enrollment of groups?

Explanation: I know there is a way to turn on and off enrollment, but would be nice to have a lock-out and deploy date so teachers do not have to worry about this. Especially ones who are not tech-savy. This would allow the groups to be created at a certain time and then closed at another.

Hi Cynthia Padavano - You ask several questions; I'll try to tackle them one-by-one, though some others in the Community may have their own ideas.

1. Is there a way to prevent students of a different section from viewing certain group names in a group set?

Basically, no. Students will always be able to see all groups in a group set by name, at the very least...even after self-enrollment is over. To be brutally honest, especially in a case where these groups are to last for the entire term, I would highly recommend (as I do for my own faculty at my institution) AGAINST self-enrollment. Depending on the size of the class, I would let Canvas do the initial dirty work and let it automatically assign the group membership after ensuring that the checkbox to Require group members to be in the same section is enabled. While the instructor will likely have to do a bit of cleanup work, this is something that only has to be done once. To address your comment, I encourage you to often keep an eye on the Canvas Studio space for feature ideas. I did a quick search and found that indeed there is a Feature Idea (that could use some love) regarding labeling of the groups by section here: List section of student in Group Set

2. Is there a way to assign more than one group set to an assignment, rather than creating a new assignment?

Unfortunately no. But assuming that the group sets correspond to the Monday/Wednesday nature of the class, then it sounds like one thing you can do is create your first assignment and then duplicate it: How do I duplicate an assignment? While you will definitely have to re-assign the group set, it will save quite a bit of time.

3. Is a feature idea out to pick "lock out dates" and/or "deploy dates" for self-enrollment of groups?

Hi Cynthia Padavano - You ask several questions; I'll try to tackle them one-by-one, though some others in the Community may have their own ideas.

1. Is there a way to prevent students of a different section from viewing certain group names in a group set?

Basically, no. Students will always be able to see all groups in a group set by name, at the very least...even after self-enrollment is over. To be brutally honest, especially in a case where these groups are to last for the entire term, I would highly recommend (as I do for my own faculty at my institution) AGAINST self-enrollment. Depending on the size of the class, I would let Canvas do the initial dirty work and let it automatically assign the group membership after ensuring that the checkbox to Require group members to be in the same section is enabled. While the instructor will likely have to do a bit of cleanup work, this is something that only has to be done once. To address your comment, I encourage you to often keep an eye on the Canvas Studio space for feature ideas. I did a quick search and found that indeed there is a Feature Idea (that could use some love) regarding labeling of the groups by section here: List section of student in Group Set

2. Is there a way to assign more than one group set to an assignment, rather than creating a new assignment?

Unfortunately no. But assuming that the group sets correspond to the Monday/Wednesday nature of the class, then it sounds like one thing you can do is create your first assignment and then duplicate it: How do I duplicate an assignment? While you will definitely have to re-assign the group set, it will save quite a bit of time.

3. Is a feature idea out to pick "lock out dates" and/or "deploy dates" for self-enrollment of groups?

For #1 - Thank you for the idea link. I was trying to search the Canvas Studios too, but with no luck. Keywords are hard to narrow down.

For #2 - This would not work for a teacher as it would create multiple assignments in their gradebook and they have a lot of grade items they are already managing and having empty cell blocks seems a waste of a gradebook. I think I will bring this up as an item in Canvas Studio. It makes sense to be able to put in multiple group sets if the teacher has a few sections with groups that are needed. (University class with Labs on different days, up to 25 students per class/section). Although I can see the limitation as well.

For #3 - Thank you for confirming. I have been searching the studio but I seem to have trouble getting the right keywords, so figured I would ask before creating a new one.

Glad to help, Cynthia Padavano. Believe me, there have been many times I thought a Feature Idea didn't exist and then I was corrected by another member of the Community! It is tricky to figure out the right keywords. Yes, a class divided by both sections and groups can make things a bit tricky, unfortunately.

I decided not to add the idea of adding multiple group sets to an assignment, as I see more CONs than PROs with that. The main one being, how would Canvas prevent the same students in different groups to be assigned the assignment (if the teacher makes more than 1 group set for each section). There would have to be a way the system flags a group as having repeat students.